SEATTLE —The Seattle area is a rich location for natural beauty, atmospheric weather — and, as it turns out, plot inspiration for crime fiction. Robert Dugoni, the Kirkland, Washington-based author of nearly two dozen popular mystery novels, said he once asked a police officer why this area seemed to have more than its share of serial killers. "He said, think about it. Think about how many ways there are to get rid of bodies around here. You have the mountains, the marshes, the rivers, the oceans, the lakes ..."
Dugoni, originally from California, has disposed of multiple fictional bodies since moving here in 1999, many in his ongoing police procedural series centered on Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite (the 10th book in the series, "One Last Kill," will be out in October). He has also written a series featuring Seattle attorney David Sloane, a trilogy of spy novels featuring former CIA agent (and native Seattleite) Charles Jenkins, and several stand-alone novels.
Chris Jarmick, owner of the Kirkland independent bookstore BookTree, has long been a fan of Dugoni's work, recommending his books to countless readers. "I believe he is one of the very best writers of mystery-thrillers," Jarmick wrote in an email. "His books are page turners with literary elements. ... If you like writers like Louise Penny, Donna Leon and Martin Walker, Robert Dugoni books should be ones you'll really enjoy."
And Dugoni has recently launched a new series, featuring Seattle attorney/chess aficionado Keera Duggan. "Her Deadly Game," published March 28, has Keera, whose father is a legendary Seattle attorney with a drinking problem, defending a wealthy client (his posh English Tudor home is in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood) accused of murdering his wife. The story was inspired by a true-life Seattle crime incident — alas, if I tell you more, I'll spoil the book's suspense — and by Dugoni's desire to challenge himself within his genre.
"I really like the character, and I really like the family dynamics," Dugoni said, chatting in his neighborhood Starbucks. "Over the years, I've written police procedurals, I've written legal thrillers and I've written literary novels that have more family dynamics. I wanted to blend the three of them together, to have a different spin on the legal thriller."
For Keera's complicated family situation — she's the youngest of three daughters, all of whom work in their father's law office and are tasked with dealing with the fallout of his drinking binges — Dugoni looked to his own background.
"My mom came from an alcoholic household," he said. "My grandfather was a very prominent dentist but a binge drinker. ... My mom's a third daughter, and Keera's the third daughter. [The character] isn't my mom — my mom was never a lawyer — but I had that family dynamic in the back of my head." He was fascinated, also, by the idea of working for a family business, and how those who do so draw a line between work and kin.
And on top of that, he added the element of chess. "The best trial lawyers that I ever worked with tended to be good chess players, because they have to be innovative, they have to adapt. The best players are the ones who can plot all the potential opponent moves out and just go with it." Not a chess player himself, Dugoni contacted Elliott Neff, a national master in chess and CEO of the local organization Chess4Life. "I told him what I was trying to do, and he said, 'Let me work on it,'" Dugoni said. "I wanted the game to mimic the investigation and the trial."
Chess may be a new world for Dugoni, but the legal environment isn't: He was an attorney for many years before moving to the Seattle area. Dreaming of becoming a writer, he switched his legal hours to part time and worked doggedly at his craft. "There were a lot of rejection letters," he said. His first book ("The Cyanide Canary," a nonfiction work co-written with Joseph Hilldorfer) was published in 2004, and he finally was able to retire from the law and focus entirely on books in 2013. It was a gamble that paid off: The Tracy Crosswhite books alone, according to his publisher, Thomas & Mercer, have sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.
Although he's worked with multiple publishers in his career, these days Dugoni is comfortably ensconced with Thomas & Mercer, one of the imprints of Amazon's publishing division.
"They're just fabulous," he said. "They never stop promoting me. ... I wrote 'My Sister's Grave,' which was my big breakout novel, in 2013, they still do promotions for me on that book, 10 years out. They're incredibly innovative — they're not afraid to think outside the box in terms of promotion and marketing, so they're always trying something new."
A downside of being published by Amazon, however, is that some independent bookstores may be reluctant to stock Dugoni's books. (When Amazon entered the publishing sphere years ago, some brick-and-mortar bookstores vowed to boycott its books, concerned that the company's goal was to put them out of business.)
"I understand it, I think it's fair, I get it," Dugoni said, noting that his father, an independent pharmacist for 40 years, had to compete against chain drugstores. "I don't take it personally. It is what it is."
Jarmick, whose small indie BookTree does stock Dugoni's books, said that while he has concerns about Amazon's business practices and understands why some stores might choose to not carry its books, he doesn't believe in punishing Dugoni because of that. "He has been a big supporter of the store," Jarmick wrote in an email. "I carry Robert Dugoni because he writes excellent books."
And the books will keep coming: Dugoni is now working on two stand-alone novels. One centers on a murder trial in 1930s Seattle, told from the perspective of a 19-year-old reporter for the Seattle Daily Star — it's an idea that came from a clipping found in a scrapbook kept by Dugoni's wife's grandfather, a prominent Seattle attorney. Another was inspired by two men who approached Dugoni, having done a great deal of research into a story involving prisoners of war during World War II. They felt the story should be a novel, but weren't able to write it themselves. That book, to be called "Hold Strong," is "a real challenge," said Dugoni. "I feel like I owe it to them to tell the story that they set out to tell, and I also owe it to them to be completely accurate, because they did so much research."
Writing is now, happily, a full-time job for Dugoni, who said he's usually at his desk before 8 a.m. "I put full days in," he said. "I mean, it's what I love. It's not like it's a burden or anything. I really love to write. People ask me all the time, how do you put out so many books? I go to work every day."
